TAS NEWS: Why the first years of schooling are so impactful

RESEARCH shows that the first years of schooling place a lasting stamp on a child’s lifelong academic, social, emotional and physical development, and all schools should carry that responsibility with great care. One of the many aspects of early education that bears particularly high stakes is the acquisition of foundational literacy skills; that is, learning to read.

Developing an understanding of the written language system is a highly complex process and there are different methods that schools can choose to teach this system. The essential foundation for literacy success is an explicit understanding of the alphabetic principle – the link between the spoken and written word. In plain language, this is the process of children learning to decode letters and their combinations into words and meaning. In recent years, Studies have shown that this is most effectively taught by a method known as Systematic Synthetic Phonics.

In pursuit of excellence, we have adopted the InitiaLit program to guide our Systematic Synthetic Phonics instruction, giving our youngest readers and writers the best start possible across the bridge to Literacy.  InitiaLit has been developed in alignment with rigorous, scientific research about how the human brain learns to read and spell, and the type of instruction that is most effective.

Designed for Kindergarten to Year Two students, TAS has seen the huge value InitiaLit added to early education and was the first school in the Darling Downs to adopt the program.

As it gains momentum across the country, Head of Primary Jason Locke said he is exceptionally pleased with the improvements he has seen in his students’ confidence and ability in literary practice.

“Our current Year Three cohort was the first to enter the program in 2018 and the data we have gathered since then shows significant improvement each year in individual reading achievement, as well as a consistent drop in the number of students requiring literacy intervention” Jason said.

“In Prep, we want the child to be exposed to as much language and learning as possible to not only soak in all of this new and exciting knowledge and skills, but to also encourage a life-long love of learning,” 

Jason said the proof is in the results, with parents and even speech therapists amazed by the improvements they have seen, while one of the best results is that children are enjoying learning too.

“As each letter of the alphabet is related to a rhyme or experience, they gain real world contexts to the sounds. The fact that the sound is then reflected not only through their decodable independent readers, but also through rich, relevant literature, it’s just the perfect learning cycle for learning to read”.